Artemy Troitsky: Putin’s Last Autumn? (Song of the Ordinary Man)

Putin’s “Last Autumn”? (Song of the Ordinary Man)
Artemy Troitsky
Echo of Moscow
August 28, 2020

I’m an ordinary guy, not lacking in simplicity.
I’m just like him, I’m just like you.
I don’t see the point in talking to me —
It’s the same as talking to yourself.

The are the opening lines from Mike Naumenko’s “Song of the Ordinary Man.” Mike Naumenko died on August 27, 1991, twenty-nine years ago, an anniversary that many remembered, especially since in recent years Mike’s legacy has been held in high esteem, and rightly so. However, I’m sorry to say I won’t be talking about my late friend this time, but about something else entirely. I recalled Mike’s song because I am a one-hundred-percent “ordinary man” in Mike’s sense of the term, someone who has neither inside info nor insights, nor political science tricks up his sleeve, nor political party experience, and besides I am absolutely indifferent to conspiracy theories. At the same time, I am quite interested in what is happening in Russia, and I want to get to the bottom of it without resorting to any bells and whistles except for publicly available information and common sense.

For many months, the popular expert and lonely nightingale known as Valery Solovey has been trying to persuade his audience, weary with uncertainty, that this autumn 1) mass protests of unprecedented power will kick off; 2) the authorities will most likely be unable to cope with this “turbulence,” especially since 3) President Putin, due to “force majeure” circumstances, will hardly be able to be involved in this process and generally has been fading away; 4) although Putin has appointed a successor, there is little chance that the Kremlin’s scenario will be implemented; 5) consequently, we will probably be “living in a different country” by 2022. Needless to say, this all appears quite appetizing (to a person with my anarcho-libertarian tastes).

Because I live abroad permanently, I did not attend Solovey’s private lectures. I was too bashful to shout “Give me the details!” over the phone, so I didn’t think it possible to get into a debate or, on the contrary, celebrate our country’s imminent deliverance from the hated regime. But another dear “talker and troublemaker,” Gennady Gudkov, has just made a similar forecast (in an article entitled “Putin is leaving: the transition has already begun”). Gudkov is super-experienced: he’s an KGB officer, a former MP, and a prominent opposition figure. At the same time, like the “ordinary man” that I am, Gudkov does not rely on secret data from the backstreets of the deep state, instead making his conclusions based on news bulletins. And his conclusions, in short, are that Putin is going to leave the Kremlin, either due to unbearably bad health, or because he is just very tired. Accordingly, the people of Russia are going to be transported from one reality to another like a passenger changing planes.

This, unfortunately, is what I would like to argue with.

First of all, I don’t enjoy regularly watching Putin on screen, but from the bits and pieces I have come across, I wouldn’t conclude that he has physically and/or mentally noticeably thrown in the towel. Sixty-eight is a laid-back age: I am sixty-five, say, but I don’t do sports and fitness, I’m not under the care of doctors, I don’t inject Botox and stem cells, I don’t deny myself any “harmful excesses” (except smoking tobacco), and I feel great. And since when did a ruler’s feeble state affect anything in Russia? Let’s remember dear old Leonid Brezhnev, who could barely move his tongue, the zombie-like Chernenko, and late-period Yeltsin. Secondly, it is absolutely impossible that Putin would voluntarily deign to vacate the throne due to fatigue or anything else. He’s only going out on a gun carriage. In my opinion, it is quite clear: this is Lukashenko’s scenario, not F****ace’s. And we should note that the Reset One doesn’t even have Consanguineous Kolenka to fall back on, while iPhone Boy, the Buddhist, and the Reindeer Herder are . . . Even arguing this point is boring.

Nikolai “Kolenka” Lukashenko (far left) and his father, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, at a meeting “in the situation room of Independence Palace” on August 23, 2020. Screenshot from the Telegram channel Pul Pervogo. Courtesy of Mediazona Belarus

Nor do I think that the predictions of mighty grassroots turbulence are more realistic. Why should I? Russians have learned to put up with poverty, and empty store shelves, and “elections,” and the riot police. Russians who haven’t learned to put with these things have left the country and will continue to leave it: as many who can get out will get out as soon as the quarantine is lifted. What happened on Maidan and is happening in Belarus is regarded by the majority of the Russian populace as a nightmare, while the minority sees it as a miracle, an impossible miracle. The only obvious reaction to the events in Belarus has been on the darned social networks. In tiny Lithuania, fifty thousand people turned out for a rally of solidarity with the rebellious people of Belarus; in Tallinn, two or three thousand people lined up in a chain; in Moscow, a couple of hundred young people protested outside the Belarusian embassy on Maroseyka, most of them Belarusian nationals. And what about the Russian city of Khabarovsk? Everyone is, like, amazed at the resilience of the protesters (for the time being it’s as if they’re talking to a brick wall), but only solo picketers come out in support of them in other parts of Russia. Or have I fallen behind the times in my own little corner of Europe, and it’s just the good weather that is to blame for everything? And in the autumn Russians are going to cut loose and go bonkers?

This is how Mike’s song ends:

If you ask me what the moral is,
I will turn my gaze into the misty distance
And I’ll tell you: I’m sorry,
But, by God, I don’t know what the moral is.
We live the way we lived before,
And we’ll live that way until we die,
And if we live like this,
That means that’s how we should live!

Mike always spat out the last line with fury. I don’t know whether this was the desperate rage of a stoic or the impotent rage of a fatalist . . . Let’s hope, in any case, that I’m wrong.

Artemy Troitsky is a well-known Russian journalist and musical critic. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up. Thanks to TL, VL, NK, and AR for helping me to identify the Belarusian and Russian supervillains mentioned at the end of the fifth paragraph. Translated by the Russian Reader

Socrates Is in Trouble (Solidarity Appeal for Alexei Sutuga)

Alexei Polikhovich
Facebook
August 25, 2020

Socrates is in trouble

Alexei “Socrates” Sutuga is in intensive care. He has suffered a severe brain contusion, fractures of the parietal and temporal bones, and a cerebral edema, and the right half of the body is paralyzed. Alexei was operated on and his skull was trepanated. He’s in a coma now.

Alexei is an antifascist, civic activist, and former political prisoner who has been involved in campaigns supporting other political prisoners. We met at Butyrka prison. I always tell everyone this story and laugh, since I hinted to him about his nickname in the presence of the cops: “Ancient Greek philosopher, fifth century BC?” Afterwards, we corresponded, exchanged books, and discussed politics. After we got out, we were both in a play about torture at Theater.Doc. Alexei enriched the production with personal account of being tortured in a Kiev police station.

Socrates is a big, brave man who has seen a lot and gives the impression of a rock. But now the rock must be saved.

Any amount you can donate will make a difference. Please, if you can help, here are the bank details for Alexei’s parents (Sberbank, Olga Nikolaevna Sutuga):
4276 3800 4603 9843 Sberbank
or +7 892 688 82967 by phone.
You can transfer money from any bank without incurring fees.

Please like and share this post.

UPDATE

How Socrates ended up in intensive care

It all happened on the night of August 23 near the Baumanskaya subway station. Alexei was with friends. As far as we now understand, there was a routine conflict with a shop assistant, but Alexei himself was not involved in this conflict at all. The verbal conflict turned into a showdown with the shop assistant’s husband and a group of his friends. Then the conflict petered out, and Alexei and his friends were leaving. But four of the men caught up with them, attacked, and began beating them. Alexei fell and hit his head. Witnesses say that he was also kicked. Alexei was taken to the Sklifosovsky Institute and had an emergency operation. The attackers were soon detained and taken to the Krasnoselsky police station, but nothing is known about what happened to them after that.
https://www.paypal.me/sutugaolga

Translated by the Russian Reader. If you would like to help Alexei Sutuga and his family, you can send money to their PayPal account: https://www.paypal.me/sutugaolga. Thanks to Irina Yudina for her help.

Alexei Sutuga reading Viktor Filinkov’s testimony about being tortured as part of Torture 2018, a Theater.Doc production staged in March 2018

Dmitry Strotsev: How Amazing

Dmitry Strotsev
Facebook
August 23, 2020

how amazing
bringing the girlfriend to the square at long last

in the morning the country’s chief warmonger cried foul

let them call it genocide of our own people
first soldiers should fire into the air
and then shoot to kill

walking down the boulevard hand in hand
like last time
and suddenly on the square breathing
freely

the neighbors have the keys
the dog has water and enough biscuits for a whole day

going through the courtyard
where a reckless shadow falls

coming out on the street
where holy humdrum trudges

maybe out of everyone these two
are moving into our madness
to be shot

jump off
it’s not too late
nausea panic attack
of course you can always turn
back

eyes and eyes and eyes
all is lost boss we are going to win
all is lost boss we are going to win

who turns primitive blind fear
into freedom and happiness
and when

who are these twenty people
who annoy the dictator so much
why do they dance before his eyes

Lukashenko’s evacuation from the palace
has begun right this very minute

Lukashenko is leaving the palace
right this very second

no the dragon has returned
a machine gun in its claw

all is lost boss we are going to win

we are very tired
we are going to win

8.23.2020

Thanks to Joan Brooks for the heads-up. Photo courtesy of Dmitry Strotsev. Translated by the Russian Reader

Hanna Zubkova: Including

The Belarusian artist Hanna Zubkova recently produced this heart-wrenching poetization of the list of injuries sustained by protesters during the first days of the revolution, when riot police inflicted incredible violence on the Belarusian people.

#stoptheviolence #ACAB

including
gunshot wounds
to the head
and various
body parts
and limbs
including

the chest,
shoulders, forearms,
hips,
shins,
feet,
buttocks,
belly,
including

penetrating wounds
to the abdomen
with eventration
of the small intestine
blunt wounds—
dozens of cases
external injuries
to the chest
penetrating wounds
to the chest
penetrating trauma
to the chest
with damage to the right middle lobar
bronchus
and the development of hemopneumothorax

the leakage of blood and air
into
the chest
shrapnel wounds to various
body parts,
including

the face,
neck,
hands,
forearms,
hips,
knee joints,
shins,
groin area,
lower back,
the lower part
of the torso,
the abdominal wall,
the buttocks,
including

penetrating shrapnel wounds
and multiple shrapnel wounds—
dozens of cases
trauma and
wounds
from explosions
and mines
to various
body parts,
including

crush injuries to the soft tissue—
dozens of cases
open pneumothorax
the leakage of air into
the chest
lacerations of various
body parts
and limbs,
including

degloving injuries—
dozens of cases
stab wounds
to various
body parts
and limbs,
including

multiple ones—
dozens of cases
thermal burns
from flames
on the upper and lower limbs
and the abdomen—
several cases;
chemical burns
to the eyes—
several cases;
barotrauma
to the ears
from blasts of pressurized
air—
several cases
ruptured eardrums
bleeding from the ears
the condition
after suffering electrical injury
the toxic effect
of gases, vapors, fumes—
several cases
craniocerebral injuries
of varying severity
including

both closed and open—
many dozens of cases
concussions of the brain
hemorrhagic contusions
to the brain—
dozens of cases
traumatic
subarachnoid
hemorrhaging
of the brain
with the formation of subdural
hematomas,
including

acute hematomas—
several cases
periorbital hematomas—
several cases
pneumocephalus
the leakage of air
inside the skull;
fractures of various
bones in the head
and the face
the base of the skull,
the cranial vault,
the zygomatic bone,
the upper jaw,
the maxillary sinuses,
the bridge of the nose,
the crown of the head,
the frontoparietal region,
the temporal region,
including

open fractures
of the zygomatic bone—
dozens of cases
fractures of the upper and lower limbs
both closed and open,
including
comminuted fractures
and displacement
of the bones,
rib fractures—
dozens of cases
compression
fractures of the body
the vertebrae
the dislocation
of joints
damage to the capsular bags
of the joints
and displacement
of the capsular ligament
apparatus of various
joints
including

the cervical vertebrae
including
hemarthrosis
of the limb joints
the leakage of blood inside
the joint
blunt
trauma
to the abdomen
subcutaneous hematomas,
bruising
of different parts
of the body and the head
and the limbs,
including

extensive interstitial hematomas
including

linear hyperemia
including
edema and induration
blood in the gluteal regions
the lumbar region,
the posterior surface
of the hips,
the neck,
the posterior and lateral surfaces
of the chest,
the posterior surface
of the shoulders,
the posterior surface of the ulnar
joints—
many dozens of cases
contusions,
contused wounds,
contused abrasions
of various
body parts,
the head
and the limbs—
many dozens of cases
arterial hypertension,
hypertensive crisis
several cases
convulsive
epileptic seizures
—several cases.
decompensated
diabetes,
(brought from the detention center on Okrestin Lane)
including

death before the arrival of
paramedics,
at 10:35 p.m.
08/10/2020,
Pritytsky Square
one case*
including

*There have now been at least three confirmed deaths from the violence: Alexander Taraikovsky in Minsk, Gennady Shutov in Brest, and Alexander Vikhor in Gomel. Rest in power.

There are also still around eighty people missing nationwide in the wake of the arrests. It is quite likely that at least some of these missing protesters died while being tortured in detention centers. (Thanks to Alexei Borisionik for providing these facts.)

Translation and commentary by Joan Brooks. Photo courtesy of BelarusFeed

Ekaterina Zakharkiv: A Sharpened Grammar

In many ways, Ekaterina Zakharkiv is my favorite contemporary Russophone poet. While her verse is manifestly avant-garde, there is something about the way she combines different lexical and stylistic registers into a seamless and, one could say, “collectivist” idiom that always reminds me of Alexander Pushkin and the revolution he led in Russian poetic discourse. Born in Magadan, Zakharkiv graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow and is currently a graduate student at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is an editor at F-Writing, Dream, and the new Almanac Fire, which focuses on the intersection of writing and music.

These three translations were published last year in Lana Turner #12. The issue is now available for free as a pdf, so I decided to put them up here as well, hopefully bringing Zakharkiv’s work to a broader audience online.

***
strange weapon of the body, promising to assemble under the targeting apparatus of itself
into the composite noun of the square, the collision of adversaries without confusion of sides
—this is touching openness, you say that love is touching
openness
don’t love me then

separation opening division of
po
lice bu
dget re
lations
trucks for an incomplete project
last shots on the national TV stations
last mechanisms last montage
right here, atop the wreckage of the signal, I touch the dust of our collective text
move my fingers over your skin mottled with italics “in the failure of time”

under the smoke-filled sky of an invisible Orleans, doubled maidens unfurl their banners
in the heart’s murky fissures

on the squares of our city the long since melted schedule
of movements, instants of matter
surmounting information

at the crossing of places
in a sundered embrace, a gold lord looks back at the eye
the cool mouth of rose sor
rows of speech
can’t close
even night
even the thin air of night

***
[you’ll forgive me, won’t you, especially if you recognize]
how crooked flames rise and fall from the black sky into the mowed carpet of the conference room
the endless weight that takes the bandages off voids of armchairs, sheets of A4 paper and the exits
if you recognize the fear that buildings stand in, immersed in the hypnosis of context and
the tall aquarium building in spreading cracks, artificial landscapes
through the rolled back ceilings of the music hall, washed out in rays of cold light
especially if you recognize how the constantly changing architecture of hybrid groups
is quietly penetrated by catastrophic panoramas

colonnades, metro tunnels, auditoriums, houses of culture,
an agalma of reinforced plastic

a boarded-up door on the outskirts of language, torn down by a construction brigade
they see thresholds, taste dust
fix the flowing water of the day, a concrete mass, object number 446
everything seems to recoil somewhere, they hear only the deaf breath of the smog above the construction site, leaning on steel railings
only the long peal of this floating, a wind of rubbish, turned inside out
you’ll forgive me this elusive idiom in the flickering of a uniform, especially
if you see the aerial views of history’s treachery, if you can stop
the wire and roses, ripping up the wrappings

***
I catch the blood of the tags by the dim coat check
and walk to the ancient academic rows
exercises in freedom of the approach
of one hundred and forty people, among whom а seeing wolf calls:
you know, they’re asking for you

name a sharpened grammar and, hesitating, become a smoldering heap of broken translation
—everything whipped up into living smoke, steel-grey, impersonal
a floor crumbling in the sky above us, yet one particle of the murky front, fed with a spoon of nuclear structure, asks:
where are the centuries that took my younger sky?

others—biological colonies—
endure, no longer being
a large insect pollinates zero which must be plucked
despite certain stalks of long sadness
it’s better if he roam the web links

when we’re trying to sleep and we touch
nothing, resisting nothing
fallen body convulsive
like speech, murdered measure
not stanzas
but nervous fire
more often than not
during the extortionate night

basically, what Nikita’s saying is that you have to capture the moment
when you begin to be the text, and at the same time the not-text
and hold it
then you will attain equality
well, he doesn’t say that so much, or not exactly that
and also I read: the beginning is the negation of what it begins
I would like to capture this moment
and touch the plainness of equality in our given historical paradigm
instead of a splicing of two autonomies
instead of economized language, instead of brotherhood, brother
sister, instead of sisterhood, instead of this very gesture of “stand down.”

Source: Ekaterina Zakharkiv, Felicity Conditions (M.: ARGO-RISK, 2017), pp. 7-8, 5-6, 13-14. Photo courtesy of HSE. Translation and commentary by Joan Brooks. If you would like to support the author’s work, please consider donating. Any amount helps. Please include “Zakharkiv” in the memo line of your contribution.

The Special Op in Omsk (The Poisoning of Alexei Navalny)

Leonid Volkov
Facebook
August 20, 2020

Everything happening now around Navalny (and what is happening is a special op), including not letting his doctor see him, not letting his wife see him, the huge number of security forces [at the hospital in Omsk], the refusal to transport him [to another country for treatment] is aimed at one goal and one goal alone. And it’s not treating the patient, of course.

The goal is concealing traces of the crime, making it impossible to detect the toxin, making sure no one gets access to the biomaterials, so that there is no convincing evidence of what substance was used to poison him and how it was used. So what if this is wreaks havoc with choosing the optimal medical treatment.

But it will allow the Kremlin to play their favorite game, like with the Boeing [shot down over Ukraine by Russian forces in July 2014]: to put forward 300 different hypotheses of any degree of absurdity (except the obvious and true explanation), and to shout “What is your evidence?” in response to the obvious explanation. In fact, they have already started doing it.

Translated by the Russian Reader

NKVD Captain Yermolai Remizov fights ruthlessly against the Motherland’s enemies. His task force has cracked dozens of cases, eliminating the remnants of the White Guard, and capturing foreign spies and Trotskyist henchmen. From reliable sources, Remizov gets a signal about an upcoming act of sabotage at the Proletarian Diesel plant. The plant is the flagship of its industry, and any accident there would be a serious political statement. Remizov needs to identify the saboteurs urgently. But how? Suddenly, among the plant’s staff, the captain notices a new engineer, who bears a striking resemblance to an acquaintance from the Civil War…

This novel, Chekists, was published yesterday (August 19, 2020) by the major Russian publisher Eksmo, a fact made known to me by LitRes, Russia’s leading e-book service. The burgeoning genre of neo-Stalinist revisionist pulp fiction and the equally flourishing genre of neo-Stalinist revisionist “historiography” that nourishes it are two big parts of the relentless culture war waged by the “Chekists” in the Kremlin to make their flagrant, brutal misrule of the world’s largest country seem natural, inevitable, and historically predetermined. As part of their overall campaign to hold on to power in perpetuity, while bleeding the country dry, it only makes sense that they would turn governance into an endless, gigantic “special op,” in which poisoning “the Motherland’s enemies,” like Alexei Navalny, is all in a day’s work. // TRR

Doctors ‘fighting for life’ of Russia’s opposition leader Navalny after alleged poisoning
Yuliya Talmazan
NBC News
August 20, 2020

Fierce Krmlin critic and opposition leader Alexei Navalny is inh a coma as doctors fight for his life after he was poisoned Thursday mo rning, his spokespersoin said.

The 44-year-old foe of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin felt unwell on a flight back to Moscow from tTomsk, a city in Siberia, Kira Yarmysh said on iTwitter.

“The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. Alexei has a toxic poisoning,” Yarmysh tweeted.

Navalny is said to be unconscious and was placed on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. Yarmysh did not say who she believed may have poisoned Navalny, but said police had been called to the hospital.

The politician is in a grave but stable condition, hospital representative Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy chief physician at the Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1., said in a video shared by Yarmysh on Twitter.

Kalinichenko said all possible reasons for Navalny’s sudden illness were being looked at, including poisoning. “Doctors are really dealing with saving his life right now,” Kalinichenko added at a later briefing with reporters.

The spokeswoman said that doctors were preventing Navalny’s wife, Yulia, from seeing her husband. Yarmysh quoted the doctors as saying her passport was insufficient evidence of her identity, instead asking for their marriage certificate which she wasn’t carrying.

Yarmysh told Russian radio station Echo of Moscow there are tests being conducted to determine the nature of the toxin used. She said Navalny only had a black tea at an airport coffee shop before getting on the plane in the morning, and they believe that’s how he could have been poisoned.

She said she was sure it was “an intentional poisoning.”

“A year ago, he was poisoned in a prison, and I am sure the same thing happened here,” she told the station. “It’s different symptoms, obviously a different toxin, but obviously this was done to him intentionally.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said an investigation would be launched if it turned out Navalny was indeed poisoned. Asked if this was a special case because of Navalny’s outspoken criticism of the Russian government, Peskov added, “the current government has many critics,” according to the state-run TASS news agency.

Meanwhile, elements of Russia’s tightly-controlled state media have been exploring the narrative that Navalny may have had a lot to drink the previous night and took some kind of hangover pill today.

An anonymous law enforcement source told TASS that authorities are not yet considering this a poisoning.

“For the moment this version is not being considered,” the official said. “It is possible that he drank or took something himself yesterday.”

Last year, Navalny was rushed to a hospital from prison where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said was suspected poisoning.

Doctors then said he had a severe allergic attack and discharged him back to prison the following day.

In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptic in his face, damaging one eye.

Pavel Lebedev was on the same plane as Navalny and posted an image of the politician drinking something out of a cup before the flight on his Instagram Stories. NBC News could not confirm that the photo shows the beverage that his spokeswoman believes may have poisoned him.

In a series of videos uploaded to his Instagram, Lebedev said he saw Navalny go to the bathroom after lift-off, and he did not return for a while.

“I heard a commotion and took my headphones off,” he added. “It turned out that there was an emergency landing in Omsk, so I thought someone was feeling ill. Then I turned my head and I saw Alexei lying down.”

Navalny rose to prominence in 2009 with investigations into official corruption and became a protest leader when hundreds of thousands took to the streets across Russia in 2011 to protest electoral fraud.

A few years later, and after several short-term spells in jail, Navalny faced two separate sets of fraud charges, which were viewed as political retribution aimed at stopping him from running for office.

In his only official campaign before his first conviction took effect, Navalny garnered 30 percent of the vote in the race for Moscow mayor in 2013.

Navalny also campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was barred from running.

Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation has conducted in-depth investigations into the highest ranks of Russian political elite, including his most famous investigation into former prime minister and president Dmitry Medvedev.

Alexei Navalny’s brilliant March 2017 exposé of then-prime minister Dmitry Medvedev’s corruption, viewed almost 36 million times

Last month, he had to shut down the foundation after a financially devastating lawsuit from Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin.

Russia holds regional elections next month and Navalny and his allies have been preparing for them, trying to increase support for candidates which they back.

ACAB (Dispatch from Minsk)

People examining the bruised back of a man released from police custody in Mogilev, Belarus. Photo courtesy of Yevgenia Litvinova and Mediazona

Here is a curious dispatch from my friend the Belarusian anarchist activist and blogger Mikola Dziadok, who, the last time I checked, was in hiding after police raided his and his girlfriend’s apartment and his mom’s apartment in search of Mikola, hoping to arrest him on trumped-up charges. // TRR

Mikola Dziadok
Facebook
August 14, 2020

Here’s another morsel for those who enjoy shouting “The police are with the people!”

A Minsk resident told me this story.

A 17-year-old boy was detained the day before yesterday under the pretext of “What you doing here?” He was taken to a police station, where he was beaten in the assembly hall. Moreover, although it was regular cops who had brought him in, it was the OMON (riot police) who did the beating. Then they laid him face down on the floor, like so many other [detainees in recent days].

They telephoned his guardians. His guardian came to the police station, and they started beating the fuck out of him, too.

He asked what for.

They asked him why the fuck he had come.

He replied that they had telephoned him themselves and told him to come retrieve his kid.

They replied by asking him how old he was and what kid he was talking about. (The man has two kids of his own.)

After some time, the man and his ward were finally released. The man said that another man, around fifty years of age, was still in police custody when they left, and he had been jailed for the same reason: for coming to pick up his kid. And the same thing had happened to him.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Wake Up! (Appeal from Belarusian Women)

The references to “drunken juveniles, hoodlums,” etc., allude to claims by President Lukashenko that only such marginal elements are behind the nationwide popular protests in Belarus. Thanks to many friends on Facebook for the heads-up. // TRR

Learn more about the events in Belarus:

“Video footage shared on social media showed opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova joining the female protesters in Minsk, holding a bunch of flowers.” Courtesy of BBC

Belarus: “Without Organisation, Without Struggle, the Oppressive Unfreedom Will Never Disappear” (People and Nature)

Belarus: ‘Without organisation, without struggle, the oppressive unfreedom will never disappear’
People and Nature
August 14, 2020

The revolt against the authoritarian regime in Belarus has spread from the city streets, where thousands of protesters have been battling with police, to the workplaces. On Thursday 13 August workers at large enterprises – including chemical and food factories, and construction and transport companies – downed tools in protest at the monstrous surge of police violence and arrests. People are quitting the state-supported trade unions. Films and photographs of workers’ meetings, at which participants denounced police violence and the fraudulent election results, are spreading like wildfire across social media. Womens’ organisations are taking to the streets – against a president whose fury was provoked, especially, by the support for Svetlana Tikhonovskaya, the woman who dared to stand against him for election. Here are two appeals by independent trade union organisations that were published yesterday. Please share and re-post. GL.

Open Appeal by the Belarusian Independent Trade Union to workers

Dear Belarusians,

The authorities’ actions – in falsifying the election results, breaching human rights, instigating mass arrests and beatings of peaceful protesters and passers-by across the whole country – could all lead to irreversible consequences for Belarus. We are hearing ever-louder announcements from the European Union and the United States, that they are ready to impose various sanctions, including economic ones, on Belarus as a state that is trampling cynically on the rights and freedoms of its citizens.

A factory meeting in Minsk earlier this week

Closure of the western markets for our products and services would be a catastrophe for our enterprises. The impact of this would be borne first of all by ordinary workers, who are in a bad enough situation already.

To defend ourselves and our freedom of action at the workplace, we propose the following pattern of simple collective actions:

1. Quit the state’s social organisations, such as the [government-supported] Federation of Belarusian Trade Unions, [the pro-presidential civic-political association] Belaya Rus and the Belarusian Republican Union of Youth. If you remain in these organisations, you are actually confirming your support for [president] Aleksandr Lukashenko.

2. Join the independent trade unions at your workplace, and if there is not one, organise it yourself.

3. Organise a mass meeting, declare “no confidence” in the results of the elections, and send it to the Central Electoral Commission. Collect the signatures of those who did not vote for Lukashenko.

4. Present demands to the management of your workplace, and the local authorities, for the cessation of aggression and violence on the part of the security services; for guarantees of safety for the enterprises’ workers and their families; of a guarantee that no-one will be dismissed on account of being seized [by the police] on the streets.

5. Record any mass meetings and demands in minutes; record videos; take photos and send this material to independent media.

In unity there is strength!

In solidarity, Maksim Poznyakov, president of the Belarusian Independent Trade Union.

This statement was published here on 13 August.

The Belarusian Independent Trade Union English-language page is here.

Belarusian Independent Trade Union contact details: Telephone.+375 17 424 18 80. Fax. +375 17 424 18 90. E-mail: bnpsoligorsk@gmail.com

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An appeal by the recently-established Telegram channel ZabastovkaBY (Strike Belarus)

Belarus is in the grip of a protest movement … and now many people are demanding that the factories be stopped, in order to stop police violence. But that is just the start.

We don’t just need a one-off strike for free elections. We need an organisation, that will rouse workers every time that the manager or boss “loses the plot”. All of us spend most of the day at our workplaces, and it is from the situation there, from the fear of losing our jobs, that the most oppressive unfreedom grows among us.

We need effective organisations of working people, constantly active, and independent of the authorities and the owners of companies.

Furthermore, such organisations are needed not only at the gigantic state-controlled industrial enterprises. Today the majority of Belarusians already work in the private sector, and the situation there is often no better than at the state-owned workplaces. And those private bosses, no less than the state enterprises, are “sponsors of the system”.

We hear about these issues less often, because there is not a single businessman who would want an organisation in his enterprise that could stop him feeding his appetites. But without organisation by working people, and without struggle in the private sector, that feeling of oppressive unfreedom that is suffered by most Belarusians will never disappear.

What we are fighting for:

►The democratisation of the political system;

►The immediate release of those who have been detained without cause at demonstrations;

►A ban on the privatisation of enterprises;

►No job losses;

►Abolition of Decree no. 3 “on the prevention of social parasitism”;

►A ban on fines and the cancellation of bonuses [in workplaces];

►Abolition of the contract [labour] system;

►Expansion of social welfare provision;

►No to the pension reform;

►For trade unions that stand up for our rights.

What to do:

Meet up with your colleagues outside of work time. Organise chats on social media and messaging networks. Work out which departments could most effectively stop production or the provision of services by striking. Join up with our resources, and at the right moment be ready to go on strike. (14 August 2020.)

■ Londoners! There’s a picket at the Belarusian embassy tomorrow (Saturday).

■ Belarusian workers support protesters, by Maxim Edwards on Global Voices – a first-class survey of actions

■ And here is some analysis by Volodymyr Artiukh, published on Open Democracy just before the election.

Some social media clips

■ Redfish film of security forces clashing with demonstrators in the centre of Minsk.

■ Film of a mass meeting at Grodnozhilstroya, a construction company. The chair asks who has voted for Lukashenko, “don’t be shy”, a handful raise their hands. He asks who voted against, an overwhelming cheer goes up. Posted on Facebook.

■ Film of a mass meeting at the huge Minsk automobile factory (MAZ). The crowd shouts “[Lukashenko] Go!” and “honest elections!”. Posted on Facebook by Boris Kravchenko, a Russian trade union official.

■ Medical staff demonstrating in Minsk, as reported by Current Time TV. Those interviewed say they are protesting at the appalling character of the wounds inflicted on patients by the security forces.

■ A film circulating widely on Russian social media. A police officer, completely unprovoked and without warning, smashes the windscreen of a passing car. The elderly driver gets up to complain and is beaten by five officers, in broad daylight, and arrested. Those filming the incident are exclaiming “bandits! fascists!”.

Thanks to Gabriel Levy for sending this to me and graciously permitting me to repost it here. // TRR